Fang Chao-ying

Fang Chao-ying (房兆楹) (pinyin: Fang Zhaoying) (b, Tianjin 1908– d. Beijing 1985) was a China-born American Sinologist, bibliographer, and historian of China best known for the contributions he and his wife, Tu Lien-che, made to the biographical dictionaries Eminent Chinese of the Ch'ing Period (1943) and Ming Biographical Dictionary (1976).

[1] He spent his professional career primarily at libraries and universities in the United States.

[2] Columbia University in 1985 conferred degrees of Doctor of Humane Letters upon Mr. and Mrs.

Arthur W. Hummel, Sr. at the Orientalia Division of the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. then invited him to be chief assistant on Eminent Chinese of the Ch'ing Period and the Dictionary of Ming Biography [4] His later career was spent in university institutions: University of California Berkeley beginning in 1955, at the Australian National University (1961–63) and from 1963 at Columbia University.<[3] In 1980, he delivered the Morrison Lecture on "The Great Wall of China: Keeping Out or Keeping In?"

Fang said that he himself felt "proud to be Chinese with an American outlook", and hoped he had "selected in the way of life from both civilizations a little better than just an average."